1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of controlling devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
When one computer is connected to, for example, a scanner and a printer and a user of the computer desires to read image data with the scanner and to print the input image data with the printer, a prior art technique first activates an applications program for supporting the scanner, controls the scanner to read the image data according to the applications program, and temporarily stores the input image data into a memory in the computer. In this process, the technique causes a user interface for operating the scanner to be displayed in a window on a monitor. The user specifies desired settings, for example, regarding a reading operation, via the user interface for the scanner and gives instructions regarding the desired settings to the computer. The computer then causes the scanner to read the image data according to the desired settings. The technique subsequently activates another applications program for supporting the printer, reads the image data from the memory according to the applications program, and controls the printer to print the image data with the printer. In this process, the technique also causes a user interface for operating the printer to be displayed in a window on the monitor. The user specifies desired settings, for example, regarding a printing operation, via the user interface for the printer and gives instructions regarding the desired settings to the computer. The computer then causes the printer to print the image data according to the desired settings.
As described above, the prior art technique requires to activate the plurality of applications programs for supporting the respective devices and implement the data transfer between the devices, such as the scanner and the printer.
In one exemplified configuration, it is assumed that a certain device is connected to one computer and another device is connected to another computer, among a plurality of computers connecting with one another via a network. In this configuration, the prior art technique makes it rather difficult to transfer data between the certain device and the another device according to an applications program, which is activated by still another computer, since these computers are connected to one another via the network.
In the prior art technique, one predetermined device can receive and process the data transmitted from another predetermined device. It is, however, not guaranteed that one arbitrary device can receive and process the data transmitted from another arbitrary device. In some cases, effective data transfer is accordingly not available between these arbitrary devices.
The prior art technique causes different user interfaces for the respective devices to be displayed separately in the process of performing the data transfer between these devices. This configuration forces the user to separately specify instructions on the different user interfaces, thereby undesirably worsening the operatability.